Folly Quotes - Page 30

• Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate, That few, but such as cannot write, translate.

  John Denham

  Writing, Fate, Pride

  'To Richard Fanshaw' (1648)

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• In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

  Adam Smith

  Apology, May, Wealth

  Adam Smith, William Playfair (1811). “An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations”, p.13

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• When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.

  John Locke

  Fashion, Crafts, Sacred

  John Locke (1728). “Two Treatises of Government: In the Former the False Principles & Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer & His Followers, are Detected & Overthrown; the Latter is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent & End of Civil Government”, p.49

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• The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not. But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing.

  Jeremy Taylor

  Light, Atheism, Tongue

  Jeremy Taylor (1841). “The Whole Sermons of Jeremy Taylor ...: And, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Dying : with a Biographical Memoir”, p.310

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• It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.

  John Adams

  Evil, Madness, Imaginary

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.422

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• If there be ground for you to trust, as you do, in your own righteousness, then all that Christ did to purchase salvation, and all that God did from the fall of man to prepare the way for it, is in vain. Consider what greater folly could you have devised to charge upon God than this, that all those things were done so needlessly; when, instead of all this, He might only have called you forth, and committed the business to you, which you think you can do so easily.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Fall, Men, Thinking

  Jonathan Edwards “The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Volume I - III”, Lulu.com

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• Would any thing but a madman complain of uncertainty? Uncertainty and expectation are joys of life; security is an insipid thing; and the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase.

  William Congreve

  Expectations, Joy, Wish

  William. II Congreve William Wycherley (John Vanbrugh and Farquhar George), William. II Wycherley, William Congreve, George Farquhar, John Vanbrugh (1840). “Dramatic Works with Biographical and Critical Notices by Leigh Hunt. - London, Moxon 1840”, p.229

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• Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and... provide for their own safety and security.

  John Locke

  Ambition, Hands, People

  John Locke (1947). “Two Treatises of Government: With a Supplement, Patriarcha, by Robert Filmer”, p.233, Simon and Schuster

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• Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.

  James G. Frazer

  Buddhism, Blow, Roots

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• Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Would Be, Said

  Michel de Montaigne (1925). “The Essays of Montaigne”

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• We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity; we are not so wretched as we are base

  Michel de Montaigne

  Evil, Purpose, Fortune

  Michel de Montaigne (1925). “The essays of Montaigne”

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• Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace. In a democracy, it often takes a scandal to trigger reform. Enron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a long, long time.

  Charlie Munger

  Enron Scandal, Civilization, Long

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• A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland's youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what's left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.

  Michelle Malkin

  Cities, Oakland, Justice

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• The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.

  Garrett Hardin

  Experts, Opinion, Accepting

  Garrett James Hardin (1985). “Filters Against Folly: How to Survive Despite Economists, Ecologists, and the Merely Eloquent”, Penguin Group USA

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• The three filters [against folly] operate through these particular questions: Literacy: What are the words? Numeracy: What are the numbers? Ecolacy: And then what?

  Garrett Hardin

  Numbers, Filters, Three

  Garrett James Hardin (1985). “Filters Against Folly: How to Survive Despite Economists, Ecologists, and the Merely Eloquent”, Penguin Group USA

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• Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself.

  Charlie Munger

  Common Sense, Bats, Tunes

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• 'Crowd folly', the tendency of humans, under some circumstances, to resemble lemmings, explains much foolish thinking of brilliant men and much foolish behavior - like investment management practices of many foundations represented here today. It is sad that today each institutional investor apparently fears most of all that its investment practices will be different from practices of the rest of the crowd.

  Charlie Munger

  Men, Thinking, Practice

  "Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor". Book by Tren Griffin, September 15, 2015.

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• When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

  T. S. Eliot

  Hair, Hands, Lovely

  The Waste Land l. 253 (1922)

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• History will prove me right. This is an exercise in folly.

  George W. Bush

  Exercise, Prove

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• The dull, purblind folly of the very rich men, their greed and arrogance, and the corruption in business and politics, have tended to produce a very unhealthy condition.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Men, Greed, Arrogance

  Theodore Roosevelt (1952). “The big stick, 1905-1907”

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• I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Blame, Pupils, Masters

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2015). “Thoughts on Art and Life: "Behind the Genius"”, p.118, eKitap Projesi

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• To speak less of oneself than what one really is, is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under a man's value, is pusillanimity and cowardice.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Speak Less, Pay

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.614, Delphi Classics

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• [GEICO] got to thinking that, because they were making a lot of money, they knew everything. And they suffered huge losses. All they had to do was to cut out all the folly and go back to the perfectly wonderful business that was lying there.

  Charlie Munger

  Lying, Cutting, Loss

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• All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can - and must - be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly - and no doubt will keep trying.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Children, Luxury, Perfect

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.225, Penguin

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• If emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal conncurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure? It was not the wisdom of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal folly by the working classes of England, that saved the west of Europe from plunging headlong into an infamous crusade for the propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Karl Marx

  War, Blood, Europe

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.581, Oxford University Press, USA

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